


work from home

by blifuys



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Claude is an Accountant and he's not having a good day at all, First Meetings, Humor, IKEA Furniture, M/M, Miscommunication, Pre-Relationship, Sylvain Jose Gautier Being Himself, dimitri is a good friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:42:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22100482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blifuys/pseuds/blifuys
Summary: Claude is not happy, and the thumping on the other side of the wall is driving him insane.dimiclaude week 2020 day 2: modern
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 216





	work from home

**Author's Note:**

> now I wish this could have been done a little better, but i really wanted to do something dimiclaude that ISN'T just a simple drabble uwu
> 
> i'm publicly thanking the creators of dimiclaude week too, because GOD, i am so happy more content is coming for my idiots.

Claude is not happy.

Granted, it’s not like he’s in an _eternal_ state of unhappy, mind you. His life is pretty solid—he’s out of the nest, he has a job he actually _likes_ , and he lives five minutes away from a restaurant with _decent, authentic_ dürüms. His friends are pretty cool, his neighbours are equally nice, and honestly? Everything’s fallen into place for him.

And yet. _And yet._

The banging on the other side of his living room is threatening to drive him _insane_. He feels like he could reach his hand into his hair and grab a fistful of wavy brown locks, then rip them off from the root in frustration.

 _Thump._ Stifled mumbling. _Thump._ More stifled mumbling.

 _THUMP._ A shout. _Thu—_

Okay. Rewind. Claude is _not_ happy, and he is about to go mad.

He glances to the laptop set in front of him on his dining table, the keyboard covered in stacks of papers with some indescribable scribbles scratched across the lines. His calculator lays haphazardly to his side, some long-forgotten digit on the screen staring him in the eye. It laughs at him. It taunts him. He has no idea what the fuck he’s doing, and he feels the anger begin to seep into every vein and artery that runs deep into his flesh like venom, staining his blood.

The thumping isn’t a regular occurrence. Claude has to thank Sylvain for being a pretty good neighbour, for being close to silent even when he had the habit of bringing home an entire conga line of girls, each face different every night. He’s had the opportunity to bump into a few of them before, and each last night conquest of Sylvain’s always meets the same end—a breakup, a ghosting, or something like that. It doesn’t make it easy at all, listening to unidentified giggling on the other side of his mahogany door in the dead of the night, making their way past his home and straight into bed with limbs tangled and no strings attached, at least on Sylvain’s end.

For better or for worse, Claude is at the very least _grateful_ that memorising an entire phonebook of names isn’t necessary when it comes to Sylvain.

So when Sylvain reveals to him over a movie marathon and a mouthful of salted popcorn that he’s dating, Claude has to wonder if he’s fallen into a parallel dimension where everything works _backwards_.

“Are you for real?” Were his first words, his fingers holding onto a few kernels missing its mark and sending popcorn bits straight into his lap, but butter grease on his couch was the least of his problems then. “You. _The_ Sylvain Jose Gautier, _dating._ I thought you swore off commitment?”

“Well,” The redhead deliberately kept his eyes on the screen of Claude’s TV screen, but it was very certain to Claude that he had _not_ been paying attention to whatever they were watching at all, “I guess I’ve just been holding out for this _one_ person, y’know?”

And unlike how Claude knows Sylvain—Golden Child of the Gautier Empire and Very In Need Of Therapy—his words are a far cry from the easy-going detachment he’s used to. He’s lighter, softer, warmer, and so deeply in love. So he nodded then, unable to find it in him to tease him for going soft. Claude thinks of love as something sacred, and poking fun at Sylvain’s feelings just doesn’t feel _right._

That’s why, when he hears his wall practically begin to tear itself down from the other side, he desperately battles the monster inside himself, the ugly, shadowy figure manifesting in his brain telling him to destroy Sylvain _and_ his boyfriend for imposing on his peace and quiet. For daring to make his already-shit day even worse by egging on the ache that’s beginning to tighten itself around his head, squeezing like a vice grip.

He’s good at his job. Not that he _likes_ it for anything more than the steady flow of money it provides, but maintaining the books and analysing trends has its own weirdly therapeutic charm, even if the job leaves him tearing at his roots on more than one occasion daily. In particular, he’s had to bring home work on a _weekend,_ a weekend he could have spend under the covers with a good book he’s had sadly laying on the coffee table for a couple of weeks now.

So yes. Claude is absolutely _not_ happy that he’s being _deprived_ of solace and a peace of mind, while weird numbers that don’t match up taunt him from their spot on the page he’s mulled over for the last half an hour, and the thumping next door is making him want to storm up to Sylvain’s door and wring his neck dry with both hands, damn the laws of this land.

_THUMP. THUMPTHUMPTHUMP—_

A harsh scrape squeaks loudly against the scratched parquet of his floor as he all but throws his chair back, and he lands heavy steps while he walks a beeline straight to the exit. He feels like he’s about to explode, the rage settling into his bones and driving him forward to ending everything that is Sylvain Jose Gautier and Felix Fraldarius.

Gold-plated numbers nailed on the door stare right at him, a mocking glimmer reflecting the hallway’s ceiling light as he parks himself right in front of the door. Usually, he’d ring the doorbell and wait, possibly with a bottle of wine or two in hand chilling his skin to a particular painful chill, but that’s not happening today.

Today he raises a fist high in the air, before he brings it straight down on the wood, the loud banging resounding through the empty hall. He agrees that it might just be a little too early for some people to be subjected to his rage this early in the day, but he’s never been so good with control when rage boils over, spilling out of the already-large bowl he has for his patience.

“SYLVAIN JOSE GAUTIER,” Claude’s voice booms, and it’s surprising even to him that he has the capacity for such rage, such fury that’s always been easily held under a mask of indifference or perfectly angled smiles and knowing looks, “If you don’t stop fucking your boyfriend against the wall RIGHT NOW—!”

He brings his fist down one more time for good measure, a resounding pound that will send a message effectively, but right before Claude’s hand meets wood, the door opens.

What greets him is not coral-red hair and a laughing gaze, ready to deflect everything with an easy smile and practiced words, but rather—

He sees gold, gold and gold.

Sylvain does not stand in the doorway of his own apartment, but he’s replaced by tall, blond and rugged, a man with a left eye bluer than the skies, while his right stays shut—scarred over and never to be opened again. He doesn’t know who this is, of course. Claude’s considered himself to be of average height, but seeing someone new tower over him like Sylvain usually does makes him wonder if he’s honestly as tall as he likes to think of himself, or everyone else just had a better development than he.

It’s like a slap in the face, really, how this man is so perfectly chiselled that it’s borderline illegal. His eyes trace upwards, from the black sweatpants covering his legs and the white stripes off the side— _really? Adidas?—_ to the way the dark navy blue shirt stretches over his perfect torso. The fabric accentuates every nook and cranny, and Claude prays to every single god and goddess he can remember off the top of his head to please have enough sanity left to not drool a puddle right in front of this man.

The man’s face is twisted in hesitation, caution even, as he addresses Claude who had somehow forgotten that he’s furious in the first place. He’s forgotten his intent to murder Sylvain in cold blood, to tell his stupid manlet of a boyfriend to quit enabling inappropriate sex against shared structures in the apartment, and he realises—

Wait. Why did he think the noise had anything to do with Felix in the first place?

“Um. Felix isn’t, uh, _here_. He’s coming over in a few hours, according to Sylvain, but he’s not here. Right now. At this moment. ” The man speaks in such an awkwardly formal tone that Claude has to hold himself back from the whiplash. His looks clearly don’t match his voice, where he might have expected angry Russian cursing to pour from his mouth freely, something akin to royal standard of speech blows Claude’s image of a sweatpants and slides-wearing mobster out of the water.

And this is where he mentally promises to never judge a book by its cover again for as long as he shall live.

“Uh, you’re not Sylvain,” Claude stupidly says before he can catch himself, because _of course_ that’s not Sylvain, idiot! He wonders if the stress of work has finally knocked his brain out of calibration, and that’s why he’s bumbling and fumbling like an idiot instead of functioning on proper, “I’ve never met you before.”

“Dimitri,” The man— _Dimitri­—_ tells him, “I’m Sylvain’s childhood friend. I’m just here to install a shelf—”

“Claude?"

"Ah, Sylvain. Your neighbor. He was just telling you to stop, um—stop _fucking_ your boyfriend against the wall—”

“But Felix isn’t here?”

“That’s what I was telling him—”

Claude sighs loudly, breaking the back and forth happening in front of him. “Alright, so what on earth are you guys doing in there then? You sound like you’re about to smash the wall in.”

Dimitri quickly drops his gaze, while Sylvain has the audacity to grin like he hasn’t been making life hell for Claude in for the last hour or so. Claude rolls his eyes and pushes past the both of them, because all semblance of control and patience has flown out the window in the last few hours or so and he doesn’t quite have it in him anymore to play nice. He storms into the apartment, its layout identical but flipped to Claude’s, and he comes face to face with the tall shelf half-bolted into the wall. There’s a hammer left haphazardly on one of the shelves alongside a small handful of nails, some of them suspiciously bent to hell-and-back upon closer look.

“How on earth,” He manages to say without snapping, thankfully, “Did you manage to make IKEA furniture sound like an underground sex dungeon?”

Granted, he’s never _been_ in an underground sex dungeon before, but he thinks that rough table-splitting sex is definitely in the cards for something like that, similar the incessant noise that annoyed him thoroughly earlier.

“Nah,” Sylvain steps back into his house with a very exasperated Dimitri in tow, “My sex dungeon isn’t out in the open, and only Felix can come in—”

An elbow meets Sylvain in the side, violently stopping him from speaking any further.

“I am sorry for that,” Dimitri quickly apologises while Sylvain doubles over from the pain, his hand pressed down against where his friend had butted against so painfully, “I can’t quite control my strength, so the noise that I made was a result of that.”

The way he looks at Claude is so unnecessarily earnest that it makes his heart pound faster in his chest, because it should certainly be illegal that a man that looks like Dimitri could look so adorable while apologising. His eye is focused downward, his head hung like a sad puppy who’s been yelled at by his owner, and he even has his hands folded in front of him to show how sincere he is.

What was he angry about again? Oh. Oh right. The pounding.

“I mean, even if you _weren’t_ about to send the ceiling crashing on me, I doubt I’d be able to get any work done.” It is true. Now that he has a clearer head, the previous heavy angst he experienced while his accounts stared at him from his table was a telltale sign that it’s just not his day, and he’s not going to finish it by the sunset even if he forces himself to sit down and suffer in agony for another couple of hours. His body is too angsty, too fidgety for him to sit still for too long while his mind goes _wild_.

So he does what any sane person does.

“Let me help you out.”

Dimitri’s eye goes comically wide, and Sylvain—who’s recovered from the sudden ambush—looks like he’s about to burst into laughter. And Claude knows that he knows, knows that Sylvain has seen _something_ that he himself hasn’t quite noticed yet, and it pisses him off, thank you very much.

“Well,” Dimitri trails off and looks at Sylvain, who replies with a nod of confirmation with an increasingly smug smirk, “It is quite unfair of me to burden you with this task, but your help will be greatly appreciated.”

“Think none of it.” Claude says.

“Oh, but I insist,” Dimitri’s smile is insistent, and he already works on pulling on his phone, swiping it alive and tapping… _something_ on it. “Here, why not you tell me what kind of coffee you like? Or tea. I’ll order something for us while we work, and it’ll be my treat.”

“That won’t be necessary—”

“I insist, I will not allow your kindness to go unreturned.”

Earnest. Kind. Sincere. Those are the words he’d choose to describe the man in front of him with—and he finds it hard to turn him down. Not when he’s so eagerly scrolling up and down, already muttering to Sylvain and discussing orders.

“You’ll have to pay for your own, Sylvain.”

“ _Hey!_ ” Sylvain whines next to him, and he has to wonder if the redhead’s really 25 years old, or he’s just pretending to be.

Claude wanders closer to Dimitri, leaning his head in close enough that he can catch the scent of something woody and clean on his person. A warm feeling pools in his face when he realises how nice Dimitri smells, as weird as that sounds from a person who he just met.

“I usually go for an cold Almyran pine needle tea,” His nose is so alarmingly close to Dimitri’s shoulder, easy for him to just hook his chin on him and stay there, “Let me know how much it is, I’ll pay you back later.”

Dimitri has a very calming aura to be around, Claude thinks, and if he could he’d surely find solace in just sitting around the man who seems

“Okay,” Dimitri speaks in a tone that sounds like _sure, I’ll remind you later,_ if _I remember,_ and he keys in the order on his screen. As soon as he confirms the delivery, he slides his phone back into his pocket fast enough that Claude would not have been able to see his order, “Shall we get to work?”

“Of course, your Kingliness,” The corner of Claude’s lips quirks up very gently as he tests the waters by throwing him a dumb joke, and he dips himself down into a bow that he faintly remembers from watching childhood movies on the kid’s channel back in the day, “I am your humble servant, and your order is my command.”

The laugh that rings in his ears from Dimitri’s amusement is all he needs, really, to make his day just a little warmer—a little rosier around the edges as compared to the dread and anger that’s plagued his mind since he woke up that morning.

And if only to distract himself from allowing anything to settle as he keeps catching glimpses of Dimitri’s kind, sincere smile and the half-moon curve his eye does when he easily laughs at something Sylvain or Claude says, he tells himself that the hammering he feels in his chest is from him nailing another nail down, and _not_ his heart reacting weirdly to whatever this is.

But Claude is smart, and he knows he’s screwed. He is _so_ screwed.

**Author's Note:**

> felix, coming into sylvain's apartment later: why is your neighbour and dimitri making googly eyes at each other 
> 
> sylvain, howling with laughter: it's love babe
> 
> [scream about dimiclaude and sylvix with me here](https://twitter.com/nekohmy)


End file.
